THIS COMPONENT IS ENTITLED TUMOR IMMUNOLOGY PROGRAM ABSTRACT For more than 25 years, the immunology community in Siteman Cancer Center (SCC) at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) has been known for the significant breadth and depth of its contributions to the field of immunology and for its highly interactive nature. Fifteen years ago, a strategic decision was made to promote basic science research in tumor immunology and establish an infrastructure to facilitate clinical translation of cancer immunotherapies at SCC through the creation of a Tumor Immunology Program (TIP) as an integral component of a newly-forming NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. This strategic decision has proved to be prescient, and today the number of laboratories at SCC performing tumor immunology-related research has increased significantly. Of particular note, in the last five years there has been an increase in the number of laboratories performing translational tumor immunology research and a number of investigator-initiated cancer clinical trials are ongoing. Importantly, this increase in translational research has been achieved through the creation of an environment where interactions between basic scientists and physician scientists occur easily and often and where state-of-the-art resources are available to facilitate translation of basic science research findings into novel therapeutic opportunities. Thus, as a result of the environment that was established by the Siteman Cancer Center, the highly interactive nature of the basic immunology research community now extends to the work being performed in the areas of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy. Efforts of Tumor Immunology Program members are currently focused into four central themes: (1) the dynamic interplay between the immune system and cancer, (2) the molecular basis of immune recognition of cancer, (3) the impact of inflammation and immunosuppression on cancer development and (4) cancer immunotherapy. The Tumor Immunology Program has 34 members from 5 departments and 1 school at Washington University. The program is supported by $15.8 million in funding, of which $3.3 million is from NCI and $8.4 million is other peer-reviewed funding. In the last grant period, members of the program published 602 manuscripts, of which 24% represent inter-programmatic and 15% resulted from intra-programmatic collaborations. During the last funding period, TIP had 682 total enrollments onto 45 clinical studies: 67% were therapeutic, and 27% were early phase. Accrual to investigator-initiated trials was 30%.
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